XXXI
Fora week after that hot night at Messines the Hodden-Grays had a fairly easy time, and they deserved and needed it.
They marched back to Bailleul and found billets in the farmhouses round about, and there they had the chance to clean up and refit, to recover themselves generally, and to grieve over their heavy losses,—though you would not have thought it, perhaps, by the look of them.
Simply to be sleeping once more beyond the reach of sudden death was a mental tonic, and its effects showed quickly in a universal bracing up to concert-pitch and anything more that might be required of them.
The pressure on their special front was still heavy and continuous, however, and the end of the week’s holiday saw them back in the fighting-line, with their hearts set dourly on paying back some of the heavy score if opportunity offered.
They were moved from point to point, but finally settled down in a wood, the trees of which, so much as was left of them, told their own grim story of fiery flagellations. The German trenches were in the same wood about three hundred yards away but were invisible on account of fallen tree-tops and branches.
There Ray’s company remained for five whole days, shelled incessantly and so harassed with attacks between times that rest was impossible, and through sheer strain and weariness their nerves came nigh to snapping. But they held tight and slogged on, and longed for relief and a heavenly night’s rest out of the sound and feel of bursting shells.
Even well-seasoned regulars—and they had a very crackbattalion on their left—found it overmuch of a bad thing, and some got ‘batty in the brain-pan,’ as Ray put it in his letters to Lois, and had to be sent back to hospital. It was amazing that men accustomed to experiences so different could stand it. But they did, and held their own with the best, and suffered much.
The weather was horrible. Some days it poured without ceasing. At night the rain turned to hail, and they had fierce gales which brought the remnants of the wood down on their heads, so that between whirling hail and falling branches they could not see five yards ahead. They were soaked to the skin and chilled to the bone all day and all night, and the only thing that kept them alive was the incessant attacks of the German hordes which had to be beaten back at any price,—and were.
But it was bitter hard work and only possible by reason of urgent and final necessity. Never were more grateful men on this earth when at last the reliefs came up, and they trudged off through nine inches of mud to a village in the rear where they got hot tea,—the first hot thing they had had for a week.
Then followed a short spell in the reserve trenches, which were full of water and still subject to shell-fire, but just a degree less racking than the actual fighting-line in as much as the enemy could not get at them without ample warning.
Still, they were ‘standing-by’ all the time, ready to supplement the front at any moment, so there was little rest and constant strain. They dozed at times, sitting in the mud and more than half frozen with the bitter cold. Their sopping clothing stuck clammily to their chilled skins. They dreamed of beds and hot baths, and now and again they fed on bully beef and bread and jam, washed down with hot tea laced with rum, and blessed the commissariat which did its level best for them under very trying circumstances.
Then at last,—since human nature can stand only a certain considerable amount of affliction without being the worse for it, and they had done their utmost dutyand had about reached the limit—they were ordered to the rear for a proper rest, and right gladly they took the muddy road and left the sound of the guns behind them.
There followed a few days of recuperative rest, interrupted only, but more than once, by orders to ‘stand-by’ to reinforce the front, which was enduring much tribulation from overwhelming odds. The front held firm, however, and their tension relaxed again.
They cleaned themselves up and did some parades and route marches to keep their muscles from cramping, and then, one heavenly day, Ray, hearing that the officers of other battalions were getting short leave for home, put in for the same, and got it, and twelve hours later walked up the drive at Oakdene and Lois rushed out and flung herself into his arms.